


Mera's War

by MCM



Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Gen, Retcon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 12:42:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6566605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MCM/pseuds/MCM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Valdemar's early years, a pair of Heralds rides its frontiers looking for their kingdom's future. And finding it in inconvenient places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Keeps and Lords

Mera swam her way back towards consciousness. It was getting easier to navigate this particular sea, she noticed. Or was it a lake? She was familiar with the shoreline, which was also, more or less, the feeling of the ground against her back. In all, she thought, she preferred the feeling of the ground against her back to the feeling of the ground against her face. Her Companion was getting better at helping her fall. Or at rolling her over. Or at making Jav do it. This was not the important thing about having passed out, but it might be worth mentioning, a gracious sort of princess thing to bring up, to give a quiet air of regal dignity to a situation that involved lying in . . . A field, probably. It was only mildly damp, that was something. 

Only mildly damp, and in possession of a creditable approach to dignity were two things. Two things was probably as good as it was going to get. She took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and . . . Her planned dignified remarks fled in the face of the four sets of stark blue eyes staring down at her. The traitorous deserting words were replaced by unskilled reserves. "Jav, your pet vrondi is really creepy."

"I see you've fallen off the wrong side of your Companion this afternoon. At least you landed on your back this time. Mort kept an eye on you while you were out. He was very helpful."

"I can see that Mort is very good at staring. How, exactly, did this help?"

Kira nuzzled her shoulder, :Mort kept a lookout, while I tried to keep you in the shade. I didn't want you getting a sunburn again. Jav had to deal with a cattle dispute.:

"You left me alone in a field to deal with a cattle dispute?" 

"Hard as it is to believe, the war your father's Mages are waging in the east has not put an end to arguments about cows in Gyrefalcon's Marches. Plus, not alone, you had Kira and a highly trained guard-vrondi."

"While I dispute the notion that Mort is highly trained, I do not seem to have been kidnapped by bandits. Thank you, Mort." The vrondi kept staring. 

Kira murmured in her ear, :All the bandits were with the cows: 

Mera sat up and took a longer look at Jav. His hand was bandaged and his uniform was torn. "Even if I were to disregard your father's orders, and the obvious importance of safeguarding all of Valdemar's heirs in a time of war, you were too busy being unconscious in a field to attempt negotiations with the bandits. And it was a boring battle anyway. Rand and I skulked through the forest, which is remarkably brambly." He waggled his bandaged hand by way of demonstration, "if Valdemar's Mage army falls in battle, our bushes will inflict an admirably indiscriminate revenge. I cast a glamour. The bandits decamped for their northern homeland, and Rand and I drove the cows back home. Do you want to tell me about your vision now, or should we find a place to spend the night first?"

She probably wouldn't have passed out in this field if it wasn't important, but it was definitely one of the least defensible places Mera had ever passed out. It was almost completely lacking in cover. She hauled herself from the ground and on to Kira's back. "We should find a place to spend the night. But not too far away. We need the field."

Mera's FarSight found a cave, and Jav sent Mort to stare at it to make sure it was relatively free of wildlife. Mera could have done that, too, but Mort was going to stare at something and she was pleased for it to not be her. 

***

The cave was shockingly clean, and had two chambers. Mera suspected it of being a Tayledras relic. They used the chamber nearest the entrance for a cooking fire and shelter for the Companions, and laid out bedrolls in the second. Mera and Jav fetched water, groomed their Companions, and ate in companionable mostly-silence. Jav played a game of fetch with Mort, throwing tiny sparks for the vrondi to chase and catch, before setting him to guard the cave entrance. Mort seemed equally committed to watching through the cave entrance and to making sure the rock itself didn't move. Mera trusted that Kira and Rand would be supplementing his efforts at guarding their sleep. Jav rummaged through his pack for a needle and thread to mend his shirt. "So," he began tentatively, "how was the field?"

Mera settled herself against a pile of saddlebags. Despite her father's reassurances, Mera saw her ForeSight as an inconvenience. Other ForeSeers saw events that were on the brink of happening, at most only months away. Better yet, most of them had Mage Gifts that allowed them to respond to what they saw with immediate action, sometimes even from a great distance. Unlike her father and her older brothers, Mera had only the little MindGifts. Her father used to scold her for calling them that, in his kind and gentle way, but when he turned to his own Gifts, he used his Mage powers more than all the others put together. In fairness to her father, Mera's ForeSight was more than any Mage could boast. 

"The field feels it has a destiny to fulfill," Mera began.   
"Is it yearning to be a mine?"  
"Not this time." There were some quite nice gem mines in the south that were looking forward to making contributions to Valdemar's tax base. Mera was pleased to have found them some miners. This one might be trickier.

"There's a girl," she explained, running through the vision in her head "and then there's a boy. She's a Mage, but he is not. Someone is trying to kill them."   
"How far off?" Jav asked.   
"About seven hundred years. Maybe eight?"  
Jav nodded, and stabbed another stitch into his shirt. "I'll pack the bags, you saddle up, and we might just get there in time," he joked. "What else?"  
Mera frowned, trying to understand everything she had seen. "Someone is trying to kill them young. The girl, because she's a Mage. The boy isn't a Mage." She hesitated, trying to understand the situation and explain it. "He's not a Mage while he's a boy. He's not supposed to be. But he gets hurt; Another Mage hurts him, and then he becomes a Mage."

"Someone finds a way to torture children into Mages?" Jav interjected. 

Mera looked at the vision again, "That part bothered me too. But it seems like it's only going to happen once. The boy is the last one."

"The last what?"  
"The last Mage."  
"For true? The last Mage? Or just no one to spot them and teach them, like Rand and your father did for me?"

Her father had been so pleased when Rand chose Jav. Mera had been a little girl. Rand had carried Jav into the Palace, right into the Audience Chamber, leaving hoof prints on the floors. He was the first Chosen to be born in Valdemar, a sign that her father's plan for the kingdom was working. Her father had clapped him on the shoulder, and called him "Valdemar's Man."

"No one to spot them, I think. I can't see energy fields, even in a vision, but I think there would be signs if all the magic were gone. It's not the end of all the things that magic does. Just no Mages, for a long while. Whatever-it-is is horrible. It kills Mages while they're children. It doesn't see the boy when it goes looking. It sees the girl, but it can't get her, not until she's old. Because of the boy, and her Companion, and the Keep." She paused

She would be dead and dust before she could rush to the rescue of any of the Heralds in her visions. The challenge - the mission her father had set her while he and her brothers rode away to fight Valdemar's battles in the east - was to do what she could to rescue them now. And then to hope that whatever she did would work. Privately, Mera thought Jav was very patient with the mission her father had dreamed up to keep her out of harm's way. 

"Jav, the field says it needs a Keep. To guard the girl."

Jav was silent. After a long, and, Mera felt, increasingly awkward, moment, he put down his needle. "I can see a few problems here."  
"I know," Mera babbled, "anything we build would be fallen over and gone by seven hundred years from now, and we're not builders anyway." She stopped abruptly, staring down at her hands. 

"We can't give the field a Keep, but we need to give it someone who will. Someone whose children and children's children will keep it up and rebuild it if it falls down. Someone who feels responsible for the Keep and the land."  
"Someone like the villagers. They would live in the Keep together like they live in their cottages now and hold it and farm the land around."  
Mera almost whispered - it was hard to say, "That's not what it looked like in the vision."  
"What did it look like?"  
"It looked like the Keep had a Lord."  
"Valdemar doesn't have Lords."   
They didn't. Valdemar had Heralds. There was no need for Lords, nothing for them to do. Why have hereditary nobility when you had Companions sent by all the gods The-King-her-Father had ever heard of to Choose Heralds to keep the peace and hold the borders? Mera herself was only a princess when her father was talking about succession. The rest of the time she was just Mera, which was why she got to spend the war lying in fields in Gyrefalcon's Marches instead of cooped up in the Palace in Haven with her eldest brother and her nieces and nephews. Restil had to rule in her father's place while he led Valdemar's fledgling army. They didn't need Mera in Haven. She'd had all the visions the fields and the walls there wanted her to have. The only place she hadn't fallen down was the middle of the river. 

Why couldn't her vision fit her father's plans? Heralds were a good plan. Mera had heard her father's stories about the cruel and corrupt nobility of the Eastern Empire. Why couldn't the villagers hold a Keep? 

This was going to take some explaining. 

"The Keep is a bribe."  
Jav put down his shirt. "I can see how someone would want to be Lord of a Keep. The hard part is going to be telling your father."  
Mera felt defensive. "The boy is VERY important, Jav. I can't see how, yet, but somehow he defends the kingdom for centuries. And he needs the girl to teach him" her mind swam a little - her memory of the vision didn't like that explanation. "I mean, to take him to the Tayledras for teaching." The cave seemed to brighten - almost definitely a Tayledras relic, then. Caves could be shockingly sentimental. 

"Alright then, what do Valdemar's nobility do? Obviously, they're going to live in Keeps. And protect children."  
"And stop cattle raids," Mera added, "it's lucky you were here for that."  
"These villagers have their own headman, though. I don't think they want to be the first village in Valdemar to stop having elections."  
Mera chewed her lip. "The girl needs walls to keep her safe. She needs a Lord to build the walls. She doesn't need the Lord to rule a village."  
"That's what's good for the girl," Jav pointed out, "but what does the Lord need?"

Mera took the question with her to bed. The vision had made lords seem simple. Visions didn't need to explain themselves to their fathers. This was unfair, she thought. She curled deep into her bedroll and let Mort's flickering blue light lull her sleep. Tomorrow would be a long day in the field.


	2. Keeps and Lords, part 2

The field was slightly more damp in the cool dawn than it had been the previous afternoon. Mera was relieved to see that the wet was dew. Hard enough to build a keep for a lord, she didn't need to do it in a swamp. 

Actually, she didn't need to build it at all. She sat astride Kira and watched while Jav stood leaning against Rand, calling the elementals out of the earth. Jav was good with elementals. Mort's commitment to following him around was a little unusual, but lots of elementals liked him. As Mera watched, a wave of nrodi were surging out from under the grass, sniffing at Jav and Rand. Sitting on Jav's shoulder, Mort seemed a little alarmed. Nrodi looked disconcerting - like worms the size of garden snakes, with mole-like noses and whiskers. 

The plan Jav and Mera had discussed over breakfast was complicated, but if they could explain themselves, the nrodi would make building the keep easy. For someone else. In a hundred or so years. The nrodi liked long games. In the field, Jav knelt down, stroking the nrodi and humming to them. From Kira's back, Mera slipped into rapport with him, giving him her vision to show the nrodi. 

Nrodi loved contrasts - cool dirt shot through with warm veins of energy - and they loved games. She could hear them humming over the rules as they swam across Jav's lap. They sang about the rocks they would bring, and the walls and foundations they would brace. Jav hummed back about Mages and their powers, the rivers of heat that came through the earth when Mages called them. The nrodi purred with content. They liked their new game. It was like their old game, many years ago. They had built a cave that they were very pleased with, and the Mages had praised it highly. The Keep would not be as good, because it would be built by human hands, but the nrodi would craft rocks of the highest quality, and they would build their nests in the walls so the Mages could shelter in their protections. In the ages-long memory of the nrodi, Mera saw the Tayledras who had once sheltered in the cave. The nrodi remembered cold rain and body heat. Mera drew away a little from the nrodis' memory of what she felt should be a private moment. Jav sent a ripple if Mage warmth into the ground to thank the swarm and, Mera thought, to get them out of his lap. The villagers would be a little harder to work with. 

***  
The village headwoman was tanned and strong. Her hands were covered in callouses from he fields, and her shirt bore scars that looked a lot like the ones on Jav’s shirt, from his battle with the bushes and the bandits. Anya Ashkevron was nobody’s fool, and she wasn't about to proclaim herself a Lady. Or a Lord. Her plans were about cattle and bandits. And irrigation systems. Mera wasn't a farmer herself, but her plan to build an irrigation system and work the watered fields as a commons to improve productivity and reduce dependence on cattle sounded good. She rattled off lists of villagers whose particular talents would ensure the project’s success. Not that Anya was about to ditch cattle. She had showed Mera and Jav the village’s new archery practice-ground (currently just ground, but ground with an intended purpose) before lunch, rattling off lists of more villagers - mostly teenagers - whose military ambitions she expected to turn to the village’s service. She seemed to be taking yesterday’s cattle raid as a personal failure, rattling off lists of villagers personally affected by the raiders’ intrusion and the two cows she and Jav had been unable to retrieve. Mera hoped that most of Anya’s days were slightly less busy. The subject of taking a title to leave to her children whose grandchildren would one day build a Keep seemed . . . Insensitive. Jav made polite suggestions about uses for various and assorted fields. 

Anya’s commitment to the common good was everything Mera’s father hoped to achieve. Her explanations of her personal philosophy seemed more influenced by the Tayledras than by the King’s Writ, but she would do, if she could be persuaded. Which she would never be. A woman so intensely driven to promote the interests of her individual constituents would never set her unborn children above theirs. Mera marshaled her thoughts to try anyway. Perhaps if Anya could be made to see how deserving she was. Maybe she had useful religious beliefs. Mera composed a thought-provoking-yet-innocent question about local temples but it vanished before it reached her tongue. In her mind, she heard Kira whispering :Hush:

Mera hadn't thought to ask her Companion. Kira usually left these problems alone. The Companions didn't direct, they helped. And encouraged. And left the details to others. Usually. 

:Ideas?: Mera asked, :How would you ask her?:  
Kira’s response sounded arch :I wouldn’t. The Keep is hundreds of years away, and we don't need her - we need her great-grandchildren.: Mera had to acknowledge the wisdom of this, but :Kira, we’re not coming back in 200 years to try again.: Mera would be dead by then, probably of falling down somewhere inconvenient. Kira snorted sympathetically. Mera’s Foresight didn't touch anything near her own life, but they both agreed on some likely certainties. :After a few centuries, there might not be a lot of competition for the job.:   
:I don't see how not. It's a decent-sized village now. And Anya just listed 12 people capable of leading village-wide projects. Which they seem kind of excited about, around here. Gyrefalcon’s Marches seems very communal.:  
:I noticed: Kira nudged her shoulder. :Let’s go see some children.:   
A gaggle of children had been lurking at a polite distance all afternoon, under the supervision of an older girl who insisted the Heralds were working and their Companions shouldn't be disturbed. Kira broke away from Mera and Jav and trotted into the middle of their game, carefully sniffing them all, pretending, Mera thought, to be much more dog-line than she really was. Rand joined Kira and the business meeting was functionally over despite Jav’s efforts to offer Mera an opening to talk about Anya’s leadership. Mera managed a weak suggestion about a mill. The Companions seemed to be conducting a complicated game of tag, teaching the rules through snorts and foot stamps. 

***  
The ride back to the cave felt like a retreat. “Wrong Noble?” Jav asked, “If you've spotted your man, we can go back tomorrow.” Mera shook her head. “She's the right one. Kira didn't want me to talk to her about it.” :It will take care of itself: Kira interjected. Her MindVoice sounded smug, like she was humming, :Loads of Gifted children. Companions will be coming here for years.: Sometimes Companions didn't understand political systems. Mera pondered the differences between Heralds and nobles, and how to explain them. :Nobles are born that way, after the first one. Not Chosen. We need to find that first one, so there won't be fights over the Keep.:  
:There won't be.: Kira sounded confident. :Lots of Heralds. One noble. Not everyone can do either of those things. When the Heralds leave, the Noble is left.: Rand nudged her, and Kira changed the subject. :Where are we going tomorrow? It's flattest to the south.: Mera preferred to avoid mountains, for what she felt were obvious logical reasons. The nights were starting to shorten, best go south anyway before it got cold. 

Mort’s flickering light was just visible through the trees. Jav threw him some sparks to thank him for guarding the cave. Mera hunted out a squirrel and two rabbits while Jav hauled water. Dinner was foraged mushrooms, but breakfast would be meat stew. Mera lay in her bedroll watching Mort flicker as he looked at the cave entrance, then through it, then at it again. She hoped the Companions didn't plan to Choose too many of the March’s children.


End file.
